"We're all made of stars."

Monday, January 1, 2018

- Looking back at books that I read in 2017, like looking back to a year of memories and moments. Each book bringing back to that time and place. Here is 2017, a recap:

This year I
read about HALF of what I usually read.What was I doing rather than reading?Listening to podcasts rather than reading books, not finishing books,
and going on dates.(Oh, and writing a
bit, too. But only a bit.)

Wednesday, February 8, 2017

I want to talk to you again for a little while, dear Mr.
Kappus, although there is almost nothing I can say that will help you, and I can hardly
find one useful word. You have had many sadnesses, large ones, which passed. And you say
that even this passing was difficult and upsetting for you. But please, ask yourself
whether these large sadnesses haven't rather gone right through you. Perhaps many things
inside you have been transformed; perhaps somewhere, someplace deep inside your being, you
have undergone important changes while you were sad. The only sadnesses that are dangerous
and unhealthy are the ones that we carry around in public in order to drown them out with
the noise; like diseases that are treated superficially and foolishly, they just withdraw
and after a short interval break out again all the more terribly; and gather inside us and
are life, are life that is unlived, rejected, lost, life that we can die of. If only it
were possible for us to see farther than our knowledge reaches, and even a little beyond
the outworks of our presentiment, perhaps we would bear our sadnesses with greater trust
than we have in our joys. For they are the moments when something new has entered us,
something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy embarrassment, everything in us
withdraws, a silence arises, and the new experience, which no one knows, stands in the
midst of it all and says nothing.It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of
tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions
living. Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; because
everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us; because we stand
in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing. That is why the sadness
passes: the new presence inside us, the presence that has been added, has entered our
heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer even there, is already in our
bloodstream. And we don't know what it was. We could easily be made to believe that
nothing happened, and yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes. We
can't say who has come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the
future enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens. And
that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the
seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer
to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from
outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more
deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own,
the more it becomes our fate; and later on, when it "happens" (that is, steps
forth out of us to other people), we will feel related and close to it in our innermost
being. And that is necessary. It is necessary - and toward this point our development will
move, little by little - that nothing alien happen to us, but only what has long been our
own. People have already had to rethink so many concepts of motion; and they will also
gradually come to realize that what we call fate does not come into us from the outside,
but emerges from us. It is only because so many people have not absorbed and transformed
their fates while they were living in them that they have not realized what was emerging
from them; it was so alien to them that, in their confusion and fear, they thought it must
have entered them at the very moment they became aware of it, for they swore they had
never before found anything like that inside them. just as people for a long time had a
wrong idea about the sun's motion, they are even now wrong about the motion of what is to
come. The future stands still, dear Mr. Kappus, but we move in infinite space.
How could it not be difficult for us?
And to speak of solitude again, it becomes clearer and clearer
that fundamentally this is nothing that one can choose or refrain from. We are solitary.
We can delude ourselves about this and act as if it were not true. That is all. But how
much better it is to recognize that we are alone; yes, even to begin from this
realization. It will, of course, make us dizzy; for all points that our eyes used to rest
on are taken away from us, there is no longer anything near us, and everything far away is
infinitely far. A man taken out of his room and, almost without preparation or transition,
placed on the heights of a great mountain range, would feel something like that: an
unequalled insecurity, an abandonment to the nameless, would almost annihilate him. He
would feel he was falling or think he was being catapulted out into space or exploded into
a thousand pieces: what a colossal lie his brain would have to invent in order to catch up
with and explain the situation of his senses. That is how all distances, all measures,
change for the person who becomes solitary; many of these changes occur suddenly and then,
as with the man on the mountaintop, unusual fantasies and strange feelings arise, which
seem to grow out beyond all that is bearable. But it is necessary for us to experience
that too. We must accept our reality as vastly as we possibly can; everything, even the
unprecedented, must be possible within it. This is in the end the only kind of courage
that is required of us: the courage to face the strangest, most unusual, most inexplicable
experiences that can meet us. The fact that people have in this sense been cowardly has
done infinite harm to life; the experiences that are called it apparitions, the whole
so-called "spirit world," death, all these Things that are so closely related to
us, have through our daily defensiveness been so entirely pushed out of life that the
senses with which we might have been able to grasp them have atrophied. To say nothing of
God. But the fear of the inexplicable has not only impoverished the reality of the
individual; it has also narrowed the relationship between one human being and another,
which has as it were been lifted out of the riverbed of infinite possibilities and set
down in a fallow place on the bank, where nothing happens. For it is not only indolence
that causes human relationships to be repeated from case to case with such unspeakable
monotony and boredom; it is timidity before any new, inconceivable experience, which we
don't think we can deal with. But only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't
exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with
another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being. For
if we imagine this being of the individual as a larger or smaller room, it is obvious that
most people come to know only one corner of their room, one spot near the window, one
narrow strip on which they keep walking back and forth. In this way they have a certain
security. And yet how much more human is the dangerous in security that drives those
prisoners in Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons and not be
strangers to the unspeakable terror of their cells. We, however, are not prisoners. No
traps or snares have been set around us, and there is nothing that should frighten or
upset us. We have been put into life as into the element we most accord with, and we have,
moreover, through thousands of years of adaptation, come to resemble this life so greatly
that when we hold still, through a fortunate mimicry we can hardly be differentiated from
everything around us. We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it
is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors; if it has abysses, these
abysses belong to us; if there are dangers, we must try to love them. And if only we
arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust
in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most
intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the
beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed
into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting
to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us
is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.
So you mustn't be frightened, dear Mr. Kappus, if a sadness
rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and
cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do. You must realize that
something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its
hand and will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness,
any misery, any depression, since after all you don't know what work these conditions are
doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all
this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the
midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything
unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an
organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have
its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better. In you,
dear Mr. Kappus, so much is happening now; you must be patient like someone who is sick,
and confident like some one who is recovering; for perhaps you are both. And more: you are
also the doctor, who has to watch over himself. But in every sickness there are many days
when the doctor can do nothing but wait. And that is what you, insofar as you are your own
doctor, must now do, more than anything else.
Don't observe yourself too closely. Don't be too quick to draw
conclusions from what happens to you; simply let it happen. Otherwise it will be too easy
for you to look with blame (that is: morally) at your past, which naturally has a share in
everything that now meets you. But whatever errors, wishes, and yearnings of your boyhood
are operating in you now are not what you remember and condemn. The extraordinary
circumstances of a solitary and helpless childhood are so difficult, so complicated,
surrendered to so many influences and at the same time so cut off from all real connection
with life that, where a vice enters it, one may not simply call it a vice. One must be so
careful with names anyway; it is so often the name of an offense that a life shatters
upon, not the nameless and personal action itself, which was perhaps a quite definite
necessity of that life and could have been absorbed by it without any trouble. And the
expenditure of energy seems to you so great only because you overvalue victory; it is not
the "great thing" that you think you have achieved, although you are right about
your feeling; the great thing is that there was already something there which you could
replace that deception with, something true and real. Without this even your victory would
have been just a moral reaction of no great significance; but in fact it has be come a
part of your life. Your life, dear Mr. Kappus, which I think of with so many good wishes.
Do you remember how that life yearned out of childhood toward the "great thing"?
I see that it is now yearning forth beyond the great thing toward the greater one. That is
why it does not cease to be difficult, but that is also why it will not cease to grow.
And if there is one more thing that I must say to you, it is
this: Don't think that the person who is trying to comfort you now lives untroubled among
the simple and quiet words that sometimes give you pleasure. His life has much trouble and
sadness, and remains far behind yours. If it were otherwise, he would never have been able
to find those words.

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

(this was originally posted as an article for an online paranormal magazine I wrote for. The magazine is no longer updated, my content is no longer available, so I'm posting it here because I think folks will find the content useful at this time!)

I
am not an empath.I’m pretty dense.I’m like a rock when it comes to energy.I’m not made of lead, but I might be
pumice.Some stuff can get through, but
not a lot.I’m a little rough around the
edges, but I have lots of friends and family who are like sponges – they suck
everything up around them, positive or negative, neutral or chaotic.They feel it all, and they often feel it with ferocity.

It’s
usually when the empaths around me start feeling stuff that I start feeling
stuff, too. In my experience, empaths
can sometimes act like amplifiers to the mood and general energetic feel of a
moment. So that means if an empath isn’t
having a good time, no one in a mile radius is going to have a good time. Or similarly, if an empath is bouncing off the
wall, it might be no time at all before the whole room is going spastic.

I
first realized the power of emotional energy when a former friend of mine was
having a hard time. She’d come to my
house and cry and cry and cry and after a few months of this we all were
exasperated with her. Sure, we felt bad
about her situation, but it had reached such an extreme low that we all were
going down with her. One time, a 100%
mundane, ordinary friend walked into the house right after this girl had
finally gone home for the evening. We
were all busy on the computer or doing homework, minding our own business when
he walked in, stood at the door, and exclaimed “wow, the energy in here is just
terrible! What the hell is going on?”

Even
as a "non-believer" he knew something was up. I often find myself in this position, and
sometimes it can be exhausting, or even annoying. So what can a non-empath do when dealing with
empaths? Here are some things that have
helped me when dealing with highly-sensitive friends and family. Maybe some of this will help you, and maybe
you have some stuff to share as well!

Eat
some food, not just sugar. Sugar will
help replenish energy, but you need something more substantial. Eat something with some fat and especially
some protein. The protein will help
ground you.

Drink
water. Don’t drink soda. Don’t drink tea. Drink water. Drink a lot of it. If you are doing something that is
energetically stimulating or draining, drink a glass of water before starting
and drink a lot more after.

Wash
your face. This will refresh you and
clear your energy. It feels good. It’s a re-set button.When I am feeling energetically unclean, I
splash cold water on my face three times, rubbing around my eyes and nose and
especially on my forehead. Washing your
face and hands in cool water works wonders.

Carry
hematite or some other grounding stone. Keep
in mind that hematite is said to bounce energy back to the sender, so while
it’s grounding it might not be the best to neutralize energy. Some recommend
onyx or obsidian.Try a few different stones and see
what works best for you in different situations.

Touch
the ground with your bare feet.

Take
three deep breaths.

Knock
on wood or on the bare earth. Touch your finger-tips to wood or to the soil.

Don’t
let your empath-friends get carried away. This happens all too easily. Lovingly remind them to stay grounded in
reality. As fun as magic and energy can
be, oftentimes empaths escalate energetic situations into an atomic explosion,
and this isn’t always appropriate. Empaths
often can seem to over-exaggerate or even be drama queens, so be sympathetic to
their experiences but keep them grounded in reality. Sometimes empaths can get carried away about
ghosts and demons and angels and portals and visions and all sorts of fun/scary
things. These experiences can be valid,
but can also be exaggerated and blown way out of proportion. This can be confusing and annoying for
non-empaths, so be patient but also be grounded in reality. If an empath-friend is getting carried away,
encourage them to calm down and center themselves. Encourage them to think with logic rather than
emotion, their minds rather than their hearts.Even though intuition is priceless and vital, it sometimes needs to be
balanced out with rationality.Emotions
can be vitally important and useful, especially to magic-users and occultists,
but they can also dilute the reality of the situation and can quickly become
amplified to the point when they are no longer useful or serving their purpose.

Help
your empath-friend to know themselves, to know their strengths and limitations,
their successes and their triggers. Help
them to avoid potentially negative situations. Sometimes empaths seem to get themselves into
messes, both in the magical sense and in the mundane sense. Helping your empath-friend to explore their
potential while maintaining clear limits and boundaries will help them control
their own emotions and abilities, which in turn will help you and others when
interacting with them. Help them to
explore techniques that help them ground and center themselves, and help them
to realize when something might be a bit too much.

And
importantly... Have fun! Joy and
positive emotions can often act as a shield and a protective barrier. There's strength and power in laughter, and it
can be incredibly cleansing and healing.Also, an empath can be a great contribution to a party. (Just be safe and sane!)

Monday, January 23, 2017

One
of my goals for this year is to write more, and I haven’t been very good about
keeping up with that. (Though I'm rocking my other goals - high five!) I really love
writing – “writer” was one of the first archetypes/identities that attached
itself to me.However, the older I get,
the busier I am, and the more my life takes me in other directions. (other awesome directions, to be fair!)

raw DATA!

There
are folks in my past who know me as things like WRITER and BISEXUAL and
FEMINIST, but since coming to North Carolina nearly ten years ago, other labels
have been attached to me – THERAPIST is one that’s been clinging strong these
days, but I also enjoy PRIESTESS and COMMUNITY ORGANIZER and FRIEND.

All
of these things are great, and I’m very proud of them. But in the end, I’m just Amanda, and Amanda
is a writer, first and foremost. My
bachelor’s degree is in journalism, and I’ve been writing fiction since I was
in elementary school. I’ve participated
in National Novel Writer’s Month half a dozen times or more over the years, and
I have a file cabinet full of old stories and notes for stories, and a computer
and external hard drive filled with even more.

Writing
makes other aspects of my life way easier – it was a savior in graduate school
since I could pop out papers relatively easily.
I can write rituals semi-quickly, as well as blog posts and other copy for both Gaia’s Circle and TAPA. Progress notes
and assessments are pretty easy to me, so it's important for me to remember that in one way or another, I write all
the time. But, it’s not the same. I’d like to be writing fiction, to be honest,
or if not fiction, I’d like to be writing thought-provoking blog posts and
articles. But, sigh, life gets in the
way I suppose.

I
listen to a lot of podcasts, and one of the most recent social work podcasts I had
on was about research. The interview was
with a guy who actually wrote one of the books I used in graduate school, and
it was a good interview. I realized that
I’ll probably never go back to school or go on to get my PhD because I hate
research. Not a fan at all! So instead my plan is to get as many bad-ass
certifications and licenses as I can so I can have an alphabet soup behind my
name. (So far I have MSW and
LCSW-A, with a lovely little Rev. right in front!).

Anyway,
while listening to this podcast I was thinking about my own
qualifications. If I were to go back to
school, if I were to write research articles, if I were to do research, what
would I focus on? My mind cycled through
stuff a bit, then settled onto the other thing in my life I have attained at
least some mastery and knowledge over
– Paganism and the occult. For a long
time I was down on myself for wasting my 20s, but I realized recently that that
time was not a waste at all. I spent ages 21 – 28 or so focusing, intently, on
Paganism, new age stuff, witchcraft, the occult. I have a huge generalist knowledge, and also
mastery over many of the basics. I’m a
group leader, a community organizer, a minister, a priestess, a sibyl, a Space Witch, and so
many other things. And anyway, the whole
reason why I went to graduate school was so I could better serve my community
as a Pagan clergy-person.

So
I started thinking about ways I have done that – groups, rituals, networking,
workshops, and more. And then I began to
recall places where my social work expertise has intersected with Paganism (which
happens more and more as I dive deeper into pro-bono work and pastoral
counseling.) And then I remembered when
I was invited to speak at Duke, how excited I was, and how proud. Back in 2015 I was invited by the chaplain at
Duke University Hospital to present on Paganism and Pagan’s experience with
healthcare. It was a hard presentation to put together
because I had so much to talk about. At
the time I was working on my Cosmic Love blog for Pagan Square, and had posted
a survey to get some feedback from the actual community about Paganism and
healthcare. Much to my amazement, I received
over 700 responses, which is great for any research study (let alone a
45-minute presentation at a hospital.) I
always told myself that I’d do something with all of that data (beautiful,
beautiful data.) But it’s been two
years, and it’s just been sitting there. But now it is time.

I
want to take the next step in my Paganism, especially in regards to my
community leadership and ministerial duties.
I also want to move forward in my career as a professional social
worker, and this talk at Duke was a place where those roles beautifully intersected. Combined with my “interest” in research, and
my desire to write more… plus, I need to admit that I am more than qualified to
write on this subject, that’s the whole reason why I went back to school!

So,
all of that said (thanks for sitting through my little pre-amble) I’m working
on a book! I’m taking my data from the
survey I did for the talk at Duke, and I’m turning that into a book. My goal is to have the data analyzed by this
summer (six month mark), present on the data at the Mystic South Conference in Atlanta (if they accept my proposal! I'll know in March, fingers crossed), and then spend the rest of the year
writing the actual book. (Don’t worry, I
have plenty of notes and outlines already!)

During the Druid’s Saturnalia ritual, before Gods and Family, I vowed to write this
book this year. Now, anyone who knows me
well knows that I don’t take vows lightly at all, as in, I pretty much refuse
to make them. But it spoke to me in that
moment, and I did it. I vowed to write
this book this year, so it would be ready by winter 2018 to be submitted for
publication. I have a rough timeline,
and that will become more solid as I dive deeper into this project, learn more
about the data, and the final project becomes more clear.

I’ve been outlining a ton, doing some brainstorming, but this weekend I finally
sat down and started working towards quantifying some of my data. It’s fun, and exciting, and I’m getting all
sorts of ideas (not just looking at averages, but also at correlations,
too! Yay, statistics!). Re-learning the statistics will
be a bit challenging for me, and I need to make a point to dive into some of
the academic literature, but overall, I’m very excited. I’m proud to have a long-term project, and I
know that I’m in a very good position to make this happen.

Friends! Keep me honest. Ask about my book, ask about the research,
ask about the writing. I’m going to try
to post more in this blog to help keep me honest, but also to generate some
reports and discussion about the results I’m finding. I really, really feel like I have a strong
chance at publication with this piece, and I thinking having an active blog
will help with that, too.

So…
that’s my mid-winter report! A vow made
before Gods, and Friends, and Family, and now you, dear reader. Thanks for reading, and thanks for the
support. I look forward to sharing this
work with you in the weeks to come!

Sunday, January 1, 2017

I'm not going to edit this text, since it's so long. It's basically a copy/paste from my journal, so please excuse my bad grammar, spelling errors, and run-on sentences. Also not going to include links to books, authors, or references, so please message me if you need clarification, links, etc

Physical
books plus audio books (I do a ton of driving for my job)

Read/listened
to 55 books (which is a tiny bit above my average.I owe this to my broken foot, which gave me
plenty of time to read this year.)

The
Drawing of the Three – Dark Tower II – Stephen King

A re-read,
quite enjoyable

30
Days of Night – Steve Niles – Been Templesmith

Great
art, good concept, not my fave graphic novel.
Another re-read

Jesus:
the Unauthorized Version

Yawn. Started this in 2015 I think. A collection of selections of source
materials. Don’t waste your time with
this one, just read the source materials (apocrypha or gnostic gospels)

The
Book of Strange New Things – Michel Faber

OMG
LOVE HIM. Great author, one of the best
fiction books I’ve read in recent years.
I will read anything this man writes.

Mother
of Eden – Chris Beckett

Not
quite as good as Dark Eden, but still very good. Again, I will read anything this man writes

The
Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien

Read
selections of this freshman year of college.
Good, challenging, upsetting.
Worth reading. Why anyone still
thinks warfare is a viable option for anything is beyond me.

Has
been on my to-read list for a while, tons of fun, makes me so happy I’m not a
barista any more (even though being a barista isn’t the same as waiting, food
service is still food service)

Sister
of the Dark Moon – Gail Wood

Worked
through this book with Gaia’s Circle. A
good jumping off point, though it left a lot to be desired. I heavily adapted her rituals, and it was a
great hear of going both wider and deeper for Gaia’s Circle. Just what we needed

American
Gods – Neil Gaiman

How
many times have I read this book? Another
re-re-re-re-read. If you want a tiny
glimpse into my spiritual life and my UPG of the Cosmos, this book is very
close and makes many important points

How
to Talk so Kids will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk – Faber and Mazlish

Recommended
to me by my supervisor when I was at the psychiatric hospital as an intern, a
good, useful book. I had many parents
step forward and tell me how much they appreciate it. This is one I’ll probably go back to in a few
years. Full of information, and I’d say
that it has changed the way I communicate with both children and adults

The
Gift of Therapy – Irvin Yalom

Yawn. Wanted to love this, but… I actually really
like Dr. Yalom, but maybe I should have read another of his books first. Hard to keep my attention and I’m not sure
how much it influenced my own practice (aside from maybe a reinforcement of
compassion, patience, unconditional positive regard – all good things)

Promethea
Book 1 – Alan Moore

OMG. Like American Gods, this one explains my own
personal UPG SO MUCH. Will probably read
again this year since I never got around to finishing the series (needed to
take a break because of all of the mystical, cosmic feels)

Child
Psychopathology: a social worker’s perspective – Francis Turner

Review
book for the licensing exam. Useful but
I think it’s a bit old and some of the content was outdated.

Trump
of Chaos – Jen McConnell

The
thrilling conclusion to her Chaos series, rewarding to see the progress of
these characters and this book (I was one of her beta readers for the first
book!)

Beltane
– Llewellyn

My
favorite holiday! Cute book. What a complex holiday. It’s not given enough credit by Pagans. So much depth.

Persepolis:
the story of a childhood – Marjane Satrap

Great
book, my favorite of the two. In middle
school I wrote a paper about a friend’s father who was a child in Iran before
the war, and it was nice to revisit

On
Being a Therapist – Jeffrey A Kottler

Useful
and challenging, I don’t think Kottler is a social worker, because I think his
perspective on some things would be a bit different, but a really encouraging
book when I was a point in my life/work when I was thinking “wow, I suck so
much!” No, I don’t suck. The job is just that hard.

Promethea
– book two – Alan Moore

OMGGGGG

Get
Jiro – Anthony Bourdain

One
of my guilty faves, a silly story, but still fun

Get
Jiro: blood and sushi – Anthony Bourdain

Better
than the first, a prequel.

You
are Not So Smart – David McRaney

Really
boring. HOWEVER. It is on my required reading list for
students and mentoring. Any Baby Pagans
who want me to initiate them into my tradition are required to read this book.

Kitchen
Confidential – Anthony Bourdain

One
of the many books I read while with a broken foot, spent hours watching Netflix
and reading. Loved this (paired well
with Waiter Rant)

The
Casquette Girls – Alys Arden

OMMMGGGG I met a friend when I went to UU Women’s
Spirit, and she recommended this to me.
Vampires? New Orleans? YES! A
long YA book, and I tend to not enjoy YA, but I like vampires and I LOVE New
Orleans. Looking forward to more books
in this series

Hope:
New Orleans

Used
graphic novel I found at a used book store.
It was published as a fundraiser after Katrina, and it’s basically a
collection of a few dozen little short comics and panels, and the money went to
hurricane aid. Enjoyed this a lot (even
with the gratuitous, dumb comic boobies)
Some were so touching and devastating I had to put it down and I cried a
lot

Walking
to Mercury – Starhawk

Another
one that has been on my list FOREVER.
Don’t even remember when I bought this book, but Starhawk came out with
the sequel to 5th Sacred Thing this year so I decided I’d read the
series (though I haven’t read Walking to Mercury yet). I liked this a lot, though it’s a very
personal story and not a community story, so don’t expect a repeat of 5th
Sacred Thing

Salt:
a world history – Mark Kurlansky

Bought
this 10000 years ago from Hastings when I worked there. LOVED IT.
I love gastro-history, and this was just interesting. Read with an internet browser up and pair it
with Wikipedia

Season
of the Witch – how the occult saved rock and roll – Peter Bebergal

OMG. This one had been on my to-read list for a
while, LOVED THIS. OMG. Again, pair this with Wikipedia and Youtube. I learned so much about music. Rock plus occult? YES PLEASE.

Ritual
– David Pinner

Another
re-read, third time. The novel that
inspired the Wickerman. Such a strange,
wild, ride. Some of the writing is just
gorgeous, super descriptive and evocative.
But the writing is racist, sexist, homophobic, abelist, classist,
insensitive, outdated, indelicate, and ridiculous. Major trigger warning for this (I guess the
1960s were just terrible, or Pinner is just terrible.)

The
5th Sacred Thing – Starhawk

Ssiiiigh. The book that started it all, back in 2005
when I was a Baby Pagan. Can’t say
enough about this book.

The
Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman

Maybe
my favorite book by him. Another heavily
UPG book

Curse
of Stone – Jen McConnell

A cute
little book that was fun to read while I had a broken foot and was feeling
sorry for myself

The
Golden Eye – Jonathan Stroud

Read
the first one years ago based off of a recommendation from a friend, this one
was a bit better than the first, really loved the character development

Kink
in the Rope - Oliver Tremble

Won
this one from Goodreads, a collection of naughty one-line poems and vignettes,
heavily kinky. Was charming and only
sometimes scandalous.

Lost
Souls? – Poppy Z. Brite

My
friends lost their shit when they found out that I had never read Poppy Z.
Brite (“omg, I thought you loved New Orleans and Vampires!”) Given to me by a friend, loved everything
about this larger-than-life book. Can’t
wait to read more

Castle
Waiting – Linda Medley

Cute
collection of comics in a charming, funny fantasy setting, just what I needed

We
– Yevgeny Zematin

OMG
yes good book read this. I’ve always
been a huge fan of Brave New World and 1984 and this is just basically 1984
like Orwell barely tried

Talking
to Crazy – Mark Goulston

No,
wish I hadn’t read this. it just made me angry.
Some good stuff in here, but I didn’t really find it to be useful. Then again, Goulston has dozens of books and
is probably filthy rich, so what do I know?

John
Dies at the End – David Wong

I
don’t like funny stuff or body humor, but I adored this and couldn’t put it
down

Under
the Skin – Michel Faber

OMG
LOVED THIS. Love the movie, book was so good.
Both are amazing, very different.
Read this book

The
Devil Rides Out – Dennis Wheatley

So,
I picked up this book because it was mentioned in Season of the Witch, and
also, because the movie stars Sir Christopher Lee. I can’t find a copy of the movie,
unfortunately. I did not like this
book. A boring, bougie, British boy’s
adventure story with some occult stuff thrown in. Wheatley seems to know a thing or two about
the Occult, but meh. I’m glad I read it
but it was a trial, for sure

Bedtime
Stories for Children You Hate – Antoinette Bergin

Yes
omg so good

Who
Goes There? – John W. Campbell

I
guess I had a “body imposter” them going on this summer? The novella that The Thing was based off
of. Very good. Enjoyed it a lot

The
Invasion of the Body Snatchers – Jack Finney

Loved
this! the type of classic sci-fi thing I
enjoyed. A bit dated at times, but what
isn’t, in the end?

The
Explosive Child – Ross W Green

Accidentally
found an abridged version of this but I’m on the fence about reading the
complete work. Some useful stuff here, I think, but hard to implement without
more context

Eden
Green – Fiona Van Dahl

Nooo…
someone on Goodreads asked me to read their book and review it. Did not enjoy it. I really hate reading stuff that’s just
someone’s fantasy of them and their friends having an adventure. Like, don’t get me wrong, I’ve written plenty
of stuff like that. In high school. But
I guess in this age of self-publishing, just anyone can write their own
adventure stories. Not fun, not clever,
repetitive.

The
Graveyard Book – Neil Gaiman

OMG
LOVE TRUE LOVE another re-read

Calling
Dr. Laura – Nicole Georges

What
is it that makes hipsters so deplorable?
Did not enjoy this. I get tired
of reading about flawed and annoying people who make bad choices and don’t grow
and basically are like “omg I’m just trash so anyway here’s my book that I
wrote about my trash life.” Basically,
what was the point of this book? A lesbian
coming of age story? So boring to
me. I mean, this is just regular life. I
don’t need a charming graphic novel to remind me how annoying I am

Persepolis
1 & 2 – Marjane Satrapi

Again,
a great book, but I did not like the second one. Another tragically hip wayward outcast making
poor life choices and not really seeming to learn any lessons. Satrapi sounds cool, actually, and I’d love
to hang out with her, but her second book just annoyed me more than it inspired
me (unlike the first one, which was great)

The
Hellbound Heart – Clive Barker

Yeah,
really loved this one! The novella that
inspired Hellraiser. There’s a lot about
Hellraiser lore I like, and it was fun reading this

Something
Wicked This Way Comes – Ray Bradbury

OMG
TRUE LOVE wasn’t my fave book the first
time I read it, but as I get older, I can appreciate more. It’s a bit old to read yet another Bradbury
book that glorifies being a little boy (is there a “glorification of being a
little girl” equivalent?) but as I get older
myself I find myself relating more and more to the father, and to… MR.
DARK. Clearly I’m an October Person

Curse
of Gold – Jen McConnel

Another
fun love story

The
Gifts of Imperfection – Brene Brown

I
need to make it a point to read at least one of her books at least once a
year. Inspiring, beautiful. Whole-hearted, vulnerable, patient, and
compassionate. Not my favorite book of
hers, but after reading it this fall, I’m still feeling the love and I find
that to be very valuable

The
Chimes – Charles Dickens

What
a strange book! Really, super duper
dark. Wow.

The
Doors of Perception – Aldous Huxley

Short
read, well worth it, however I felt like I was reading some guy’s drug
blog. The conclusion was very good and
he makes many points about drugs, entheogens, transcendence, connection, and
treatment of mental illness that I happen to agree on

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Well, folks, it's that time of the year! The weather is cooling, the air feels different, the leaves are beginning to fall, and I think Starbucks is even selling pumpkin spice everything. The autumnal season is here! Sure, the equinox and the "official" first day of fall is about two weeks away, but seasons don't shift just because the calendar says it shifts. We're in a transition time, the wheel is turning, and soon it will click into place.

In celebration of my all-time favorite season, I'm offering discounted tarot card readings over at my Etsy shop! So now until November 7, my tarot card readings are 50% off when using my super spooky Halloween decks!

My sister gave me the Zombie Tarot years ago, and it immediately became one of my favorites. I adore the pop-culture images, the conversational tone of the deck, and how real it all is. This is a great deck for asking mundane, real world advice. It's not messing around (despite the zombies. I mean, who messes around with zombies, anyway?)

The Halloween Oracle was another love-at-first-sight deck. I typically don't use oracle decks very often, but I adored the images and really, what's not to love about Halloween? This deck really pulls from Halloween culture, folklore, and mythology. The images are gorgeous, and the messages are timeless (despite the October theme.) This deck is especially poignant when asking deeper questions about inner mysteries and spiritual issues.Get a reading with the Halloween Oracle!

Finally, I have some Samhain incense for sale at my Etsy shop, too. I made this with my sister, and it's a spicy, heady blend and I've had good luck with using it during ancestor work.

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Hello, friends. This is another re-post, something originally published over at Witches & Pagans / Pagan Square in 2015. I meant to re-post this article earlier in August, but I guess the "Summertime Sadness" got to me. But here it is, all the reasons why the summertime is my least favorite season and the hardest one for me to feel connected to.